Life can get pretty loud sometimes, and it can feel like it’s moving at breakneck speed. We’re constantly on the go, constantly online, and sometimes, “unplugging” from it all seems like the only way to get some proper rest.
For bioengineering professor Kiana Aran, it’s no different. “As a faculty, my mind has been always racing. I have tried yoga, meditation to just calm my brain down, because I’m constantly thinking of, ‘Okay, what’s next, what’s next, what’s next.’ I cannot sit still, and sometimes it gets too much,” she told The Scientist.
But while most of us might settle for switching off our phones or taking a quiet weekend away, Aran decided to take things a whole lot further. She spent five days in a pitch-black “cave” in Poland, turning a darkness retreat into a scientific experiment to investigate what happens to the body when it is deprived of external stimulation.
